Suits & Saris Workshops Dates

Suits & Saris: Workshops Overview & Dates – all workshops to be held over the coming 2 weeks and it would be beneficial for volunteer reporters to attend all 6 workshops.
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Workshop One: Photography - Wednesday 11th 4.30-6.30pm
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Introduction to basic photography skills based around colour, composition, mood and feeling. Explore how a series of photos can tell a story juxtaposed with one image “saying it all”. Young people looking at photographs “that changed the world” enabling them to see the power of photography and the feelings and emotions they evoke. Develop visual literacy and how this can be applied to the photographs they will create for their magazine.
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Workshop Two: Fusion Fashion & Street Style - Friday 13th 3.30-5.30pm
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Explore the nature of fusion fashion it’s nothing new, western and eastern fashions have been fusing for over 400 years. Look at the migrations of textiles and fabrics from the Indian sub continent. Look at how modern street styles have been influenced by the east a simple juxtaposition of “skinny drop crotch jeans” with Rajasthani Jodhpurs; similarly long shirt and leggings mimic shalwar kameez.
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Look at how high fashion houses like Liberty have been influenced by the silk patterns of South Asia. Look at everyday patterned wears such as Paisley and how it has its routes/ roots in South Asia but was renamed because of the mechanisation of its production in Paisley, Glasgow. We will look at these Fashion Fusions and Street Styles through the young peoples eyes in what they see and wear everyday.
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Workshop Three: Body Conscious & Respectability - Saturday 14th 11-1pm
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We experience different emotional responses to clothing; how it makes us feel, move and behave. Young people to explore the emotional response to how they dress in day-to-day wear and “traditional” wear. What is “traditional wear”? does it exist? Look at clothing we take for granted as “traditional” e.g. how the men in the Sikh community wear their turban is it traditional or has it been influenced by the previous 3 or 4 generations in East Africa and military history.
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Some items of clothing are truly global pyjamas, jodhpurs the Paisley pattern and yet they have their routes/ roots elsewhere. Can we research their heritage?
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Dialogues between parents and their children on the appropriateness of dress are universal, and hold ideas specific to the context in which the clothes will be worn, regardless the cultural background of the family (or: Inter-generational dialogue on dress appropriateness is universal and context-specific, regardless of cultural background).
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Explore that young people will always be pushing the boundaries of fashion regardless of cultural identity whether it be a sari blouse that shows the whole arm or the back or even cleavage to the shalwar that is tight and leaves little to the imagination; but are we still being respectful by the fact that the “basics” of the outfit are “traditional”.
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Workshop Four: Wardrobe Stories & Moving Around - Monday 16th 5-7pm
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Personal style might be informed, but is not determined by our heritage background. Heritage background is just one of the many influences on what we choose to wear. This is true across all communities, who haven’t borrowed their dad’s tie or mum’s skirt or some jewellery or accessories. However males may have doubled a kurtar, Nehru jacket with jeans and females with shalwar and jeans or sari blouses with a skirt etc
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Clothing choices are not about a battle between “tradition” and modernity. Sometimes they can be as a backlash against “tradition” but more often it’s a fusion of old and new.
Wherever you move from to wherever you go to, must the dress of people stay the same; and changes are often informed by practicalities like weather conditions.
Changes can also be informed by the need to be “part of the herd” so they will be socially accepted (this maybe truer of the first generation of migrants). E.g. Sikh men cutting their hair and not wearing turbans (in Britain) whereas they would have worn elaborate turbans when they migrated to Kenya and other parts of East Africa.
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Would like the young people to explore the wardrobes their parents but probably more so their grandparents brought with them and how they dressed in the 50’s and 60’s in Leicester prior to South Asian clothing being accessible or more importantly available.
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Workshop Five: Building a Collection &  Early Globalisation - Wednesday 18th 4.30-6.30pm
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Generally speaking maybe taking the exhibition and magazine work to the communities not just through physical exhibitions. Young people involved in the project can take it back to the community to discuss how elders felt about dressing in traditional and western clothes upon their arrival in Britain. For some saris are extremely practical in terms of keeping you cool in the heat and warm in the cold. Young people have an opportunity to engage with their communities through interviews and general chats about experiences of migration for some twice (India to East Africa to Britain, West Indies to Britain)
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Explore early globalisation through textile routes/ roots of Paisley and Muslin; irony of migrant workers coming to Britain to work in the textile industries and now the textile industries have migrated back east to cheap labour.
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Workshop Six: Trading Places & Gandhi – Thursday 19th 4.30-6.30pm
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Explore how the Indian embargo on Japanese saris enabled Indian traders direct access to these saris in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. This had a direct impact on the growth of the Indian fashion houses of Leicester alongside the business owners newly arrived from the expulsion from Uganda (2012 is the 40th anniversary of the first wave of Indian Ugandan refugees).
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The majority of the Indian communities in Leicester be it Hindu or Muslim are of Gujarati distraction even if their route/ root has been via East Africa. The Gujarati’s for centuries if not millennia have been traders. (“Gujarati’s were trading when England was still a forest” Jatinder Verma, founder and director of Tara Arts). At times, clothing also involves political statements, such as the Swadeshi movement led by Gandhi; the use of an everyday textile like cotton to make a political statement.
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What other political statements have been made through clothing or textiles?
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The cotton trade moved from India to England specifically North West e.g. Manchester to mechanised mills and thus taking trade away. Let us not forget the textile and hosiery industry that brought the migrant communities to these shores. Gandhi is perhaps the most famous Gujarati and a statue of him stands at the bottom of Belgrave Road yet do we question the impact he had on cotton production in the mills of northern England or consciousness he pricked in the minds of the trades and workers unions?

Venue: I’m waiting for confirmation of the room booking at Adult Education. We also have use of the public space in the old library on Belvoir Street (now run by Adult Education) that houses the Leicester People’s Photographic Gallery and the Citizens Eye run Community News Point.

Please meet at former library (entrance on Belvoir Street) on Wednesday 11th at 4.20pm for a prompt start at 4.30pm. If you have your own camera and laptop that you wish to use please bring them along. There is public wifi available in the building.

Thank you for your interest in the Suits & Saris Project. If you have any questions or queries please contact me direct or one of the co-editors Kristina or Abi. These sessions will be facilitated by Dipak Mistry.

I hope you enjoy the project.

John Coster

M 07734 305595

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